Okay, everybody loves the fucking guy. Not me.Look, here’s some damn BILLIONAIRE playboy, who arrives at parties with multiple women on his arm, like some goddamn pharaoh, who slips into a set of Kevlar long underwear and runs around tackling “evil.” Well, the last time I checked, the only people that billionaires thought were truly evil were the poor, the rebellious and the undisciplined. Oh, yeah, and democracy.
But everybody says that The Dark Knight is art. It’s “soo complex and dark”, they say. And Heath Ledger (RIP) is stunning in it, isn’t he? Wow, what acting.
Horseshit.
First, Heath Ledger was great in Brokeback Mountain. He managed to capture the complexity of a gay cowboy, forced to live a lie and struggle to find dignity within it. The movie was too long for my tastes (a habit of the director’s, I’ve noticed) but it was sublime nonetheless.
But the character Ledger plays, the Joker, has no character arc whatsoever. He runs around acting crazy, killing people and spouting ridiculous grade-school philosophy. He learns nothing and doesn’t change an iota. No, he is simply a cipher for some gushingly liberal point – people are good at heart. All this nonsense about what a great role he made it is reminiscent of Paris Hilton’s fame. She’s done nothing to warrant fame – in fact, as far as I can tell she’s utterly without skills or talent – but she’s famous for being famous. Everybody says it was a great role and thus it becomes in the common mind a great role.
The same goes for the raspy voiced Batman – dude, somebody give Christian Bale a Hall’s willya? I will give him this: he at least has some variety in his performance, from the suave and conflicted billionaire, Bruce Wayne, to the principled but violently animalistic superhero, Batman.
So, why did all the reviewers cream their jeans for The Dark Knight? Because it had pretension to be art, generated through a self-fulfilling marketing campaign. And because it had a stupid, liberal message to it – but one that could appeal to conservatives too.
That message? We mustn’t let the enemies of civilization bring us down to their level. Yup, profound, isn’t it? Here we have the Joker, who wants to destroy civilization (read: America) for no discernibly rational reason. Gee, I can’t imagine why anyone would have a bone to pick with the US of A (cough, cough, Chile. Cough, cough, Iraq. Cough, cough, Afghanistan, Central America, Cuba, etc). The Joker is, in reality, the personification of blowback made incomprehensible. He is depoliticized crime – and we all know that crime is bad, a threat to civilization, etc. And he is a terrorist. Have you got the picture yet? Those guys who blew up the Twin Towers – they were the Joker. They were trying to destroy civilization because they hate our values – not because of anything we’ve ever done to anyone in the Middle East (just as an example that popped into my head).
And Batman? Batman is what we would like to do. He is, as Commissioner Gordon informs us in the final scene, “the hero we deserve but not the hero we need.” Batman is arbitrary, violent power. He will stop the Joker, but his methods are a threat to us all.
So, yes, we’ll whip him out every once in a while – in fact, that’s what the Joker is hoping (presumably because he has a death wish as well as a desire to undermine society’s values) – but we really shouldn’t. And we should spurn the principle that Batman represents. Not because that principle isn’t effective but because of the abstract liberal values that society needs to keep functioning – accountability, rule of law, arbitration. In other words, we need to use Batman, but we need to pretend we abhor his methods – you know, like extraordinary rendition, torture, assassinations, etc. That Batman’s methods are the only effective means to defeat evil (read: terrorists) is reinforced by the fact that the crime-fighting DA, Harvey Dent, is destroyed both morally and physically by the terrorist. Batman, the counter-terrorist, is incorruptible.
Batman is the War on Terror. He is the principle of class justice – that is, the ruling class against the anarchic masses – the foreigners and African-Americans who make up the mobs in the film, the freaks, the mentally unstable.
So, like I said, Batman is an asshole and somebody oughta stop this guy, expropriate his fucking property, jail his colonialist butler and nationalize Wayne industries.
9 comments :
your on crack.... that is all.
A film should should be judged as a film. The vocabulary for which should include composition, tone, editing, performance, sound, etc. Politics don't factor in. When the war in Iraq is over The Dark Knight will still be thrilling because it is an especially well made thriller. The film owes more to the influence of Michael Mann than George W. Bush. The opening robbery sequence rivals anything in "Heat" which is a benchmark in the Heist genre. Politicians should absolutely be judged on their policies (and the actions they take to implement them) and a film on its level of engagement. We have a forest for the trees situation here - You didn't find it engaging because your politics would not allow you to see the film for the metaphor. I applaud this critical passion when applied to politicians, who should be held accountable for their politics, which affect real people, but I am afraid I think it is wasted energy when applied to imaginary characters in film criticism, and as a result you missed out on a great ride. The joker isn't real, he doesn't have rights that need defending. People are another matter. And you can't really criticize a comic-book for being two-dimensional or a film for being true to its source material. Governments must be just, Thrillers just exciting.
That said, I agree that the franchise needs to drop the scratchy-voice. It's a little silly.
"The joker isn't real, he doesn't have rights that need defending. People are another matter. And you can't really criticize a comic-book for being two-dimensional or a film for being true to its source material. Governments must be just, Thrillers just exciting."
Ah-ha, now here's an age old debate that has been thoroughly smashed by minds greater than my own - art should be judged solely according to art and not according to the world.
Of course, this is absurd. Art is always and only relevant because it speaks to us about our existence within a particular society. Of course, the themes and their representation can transcend a particular historical moment - if something is well done, for instance some Shakespeare. But, nonetheless, this is because the theme addressed is itself a "transhistorical" theme. So, for instance, the theme explored here is pretty straightforward, as I indicated: we mustn't allow the enemies of civilization to bring us down to their level. This is a theme that could resonate with someone in the time of Shakespeare - and perhaps into the future. But it is also a product of the here and now and emanates from a society that feels itself at war - it can be compared with, say, 300, which takes the opposite view, in a certain sense: we must break the old, outdated formalities of our social institutions if we are to save civilization from those who would destroy it.
Now, to judge these themes requires certain things: 1) to judge whether the themes themselves are novel, interesting and relevant socially to the present context, or the general context and
2) to explore whether the film effectively, ie. artistically, explores and conveys this theme, leaving us with a richer understanding of it.
3) to examine the work sociologically to see what it is telling us about the society that created it and to examine what argument it was making with its viewers (and a theme can be nothing but an argument) about the world and what is needed to achieve the good life.
My point in the review was that the theme, while potentially interesting, is so drained of concrete content, is so two-dimensional and parodic, as to render the embedded argument a joke. You're right - there are no jokers who need rights. There are no such chaos-loving psychopaths who drop from the sky to test our commitment to society. Even chaos loving psychopaths arise for a reason and out of a context - yet the Joker has no history. His history is entirely constructed by himself to further chaos. He is the principle of chaos itself - thus he isn't a character in any real sense. He is merely a cipher. He's like a Greek God in an ancient play. Shakespeare superceded such primitive drama four hundred years ago.
So, artistically, Batman is a failure. It's characters are lacking in development, except perhaps for Harvey Dent. The theme is reduced to the level of a banal, feel-good truism: people are good at heart. What does that leave? A hundred million dollars worth of special effects and mechanical, formal tension heightening tactics - quick cuts between a clock running down as the two lovers talk to each other, knowing that one of them will die. Music made to heighten the explosive car chases, death defying leaps, and kicks and punches, or the looming attacks.
As for the bank robbery scene - boring. There are a million more interesting. I had no emotional investment and so I didn't care on iota for any of the masked men being shot and I figured out the pattern of what was happening within two minutes. If you want a caper movie with high stakes and nail-biting betrayal, watch The Usual Suspects.
And, lastly, the sociology of the film. One of the things I like most about science fiction and fantasy is how purely ideological it is. You can watch a film like The Mummy and learn something about the present thinking with regards to foreign policy attitudes towards the Chinese from a certain perspective. Stargate, as another example from a few years ago, was nothing other than a debate between the liberal interventionist and the conservative isolationist wings of the US political elite. Lord of the Rings was written from the perspective of the paranoia of a certain section of the British elite towards the process of decolonization and revolt against the British Empire. The movie turns that into a justification for the war on terror - the need to fight the hordes from the south and the east, who ride elephants, wear turbans and worship a god that looks like the Eye of Horus - ie. a middle eastern god. Eagle Eye is a polemic about the anti-American nature of the liberal, anti-war intelligentsia. Golden Compass is a polemic against the de-secularizing and increasingly conservative nature of American public discourse.
Seeing the sociological, ideological and polemical nature of film - perhaps more than most art forms - doesn't detract from an analysis of the artistic merits of a work. It enhances our enjoyment and engagement with good art. It gives us another level to analyze and take pleasure (or not) from. We shouldn't reduce or simplify our complex art forms - certainly the creators don't - remember how the heads of the studios met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff after 9/11 to discuss how Hollywood could help out the War on Terror?.
Film, for me, is an escape from reality and not subject to its rules or scrutiny. Of course that is what it is for ME. There can never be an answer to this in the empirical sense because art is subjective. Archetypes are one thing but the relationship between the viewer and the film viewed is an individual one (despite the group setting of the multiplex). 9/11 scared the shit out of people who had nothing to do with it. It shook their belief systems. For 2 hours plus, they can sit in the dark and enjoy a hypothetical world where evil is quantifiable and heroes win. It takes the edge off. It's an opiate. An escape. Going to the movies is like getting drunk. When they are great they are intoxicating. But they are not the good fight. I wish they were. Imagine a world where people made films instead of going to war? Where terrorists had used CG planes instead of actual ones to make their point? But that is not the world we live in. I applaud Al Gore for Inconvenient Truth. I really do. But he's no Scorsese. And I wouldn't vote for Scorsese as President. Movies don't change the world. At best "issue films" raise awareness but always after the fact. The can criticize a war but they don't stop wars. Hotel Rwanda didn't prevent any genocide but it did raise awareness. That has nothing to do with whether it was a good film or not. Do you not believe that religion and politics should be discussed separately? I feel it is the same with politics in the cinema. Cinema is religious for me. Just as one goes to the Bible for stories that teach morality, movies can confirm or guide us as to what is right and wrong becuase we become emotionally invested in the hero's life as a metaphor for our own.Everything in my life affects my ability to empathise with the characters in any film. That life experience is unique to me just as my experience is with the film. For you the film was about "not allowing the enemies of a civilization to bring us down to their level." And for you that is exactly what it is. If that precludes your engagement then the film failed for you. That is your unique relationship with it, but for me the film is about something else entirely. It's therapeutic. I get to be Batman. I know who the bad guys are. I get to punish them. Then I leave the theater and go back to my real life where I don't know who the bad guys are. True, Bruce Wayne acts like an asshole, "a playboy, who arrives at parties with multiple women on his arm, like some goddamn pharaoh" but it is an ACT. Bruce Wayne doesn't get to fuck any of them. The only rubber that gets slipped on is the big black Bat suit when he runs off to fight evil and leaves the girls behind. They are subtrefuge. That doens't make him much of a gentlemen, true but underneath it all he is a just a melancholy, brokenhearted, lovesick fool, so in love with the woman he can't have, Rachel, sacrificing his heart so that she can be with the man needs, in a gesture Humphrey Bogart would have been proud of even if you are not. Sure he is off his rocker, but he did have his father's face blown off right in front of him. As you know, I have had a loved one murdered. It didn't happen right in front of me, but since in real life I have to suffer that for the rest of my life and since the killer was never caught, since I can never have closure on that, I take comfort in the fact that at least in the movies I have Batman to catch the bad guys. I relate to the story on that level much more than as an allegory to the War on Terror. That's the beautiful thing about it. It's all in the eye of the beholder. So it is my opinion that a film's success should be based on it's ability to address the immediate emotional needs of the viewer of any age or time as opposed to the political climate of the age in which it is created. Which isn't to say an artists shouldn't be conscious of his time. When Michael Collins was released during an IRA ceasefire, it was considered poor timing. It could have elevated the situation. It didn't. It wasn't a big hit either. It was pretty much forgotten. It is a beautiful film though, about Michael Collins, the man, not the IRA - the organization. It is a character study not a political argument and that is the reason it is relevant in any age. This is possibly the root of our polemic differences in opinion on the purpose of a film. I think a film should examine character and emotion over theme themes and ideas, which are actually the tools for exploring character and emotion. You say to judge these themes certain things are required. "1) to judge whether the themes are novel, interesting and relevant to the present context" but how do you contextualise that context? context for whom? "The People"? Am I supposed to care what everyone else in the theatre is thinking? Is my individual experience second to a collective consciousness, some shared history and sociological perspectice? I don't feel that connected to either my time nor the man next to me. I'm an anachronism and happily so. You cannot compare a visit to the cinema to see "Schindler's List" against a trip to the Holocost Museum in Washington, for example. Though the experience of both may be profound, one does not and cannot replace or negate the other. You and I go to the movies for different reasons. I thought Harvey Dent was the least interesting character (of the male leads that is, Maggie Gyllenhal was a beautiful snore) because he was subject to the neccessity of his character instead of being an engaging character himself. That's what a movie has to do, engage the audience. It is a trick of light with an invisible magician who says look at this and shows us an illusion and for as long as he holds us captive to that illusion the magician is successful. The joker is a magician, remember the disappearing pencil trick? Harvey Dent is a lousy magician, a one (coin)trick pony. And the response to Heath Ledger's performance is a response to his magnetism. He is impossible to take your eyes off of. It's like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause - the demented version. Heath had the same quality in many performances including the Gay Cowboy, but that character didn't have the benefit of being burned into the subconscious of every north american male who ever read a comic book, so it would be impossible for Ang Lee's film to have the same cultural resonance. Plus if your argument is that film has a social responsibility to make a political arguement, I would consider Brokeback Mountain a failure. It sure as shit didn't stop Prop 8 from happening. You think Milk is going to change lives? Is it more worthy than Drugstore Cowboy? in a Dictatorship, film would have only one purpose - propaganda. Propoganda can only be art despite itself. Leni Riefenstahl for example. Propaganda for the left is still propaganda. I think "theme" is your access point for engaging with a film. Your enjoyment is affected by your personal opinion about what you think the theme is and whether or not you agree with it. You see The Dark Knight and your response is "expropriate his fucking property, jail his colonialist butler, and Nationalize Wayne industries." I'm just glad they stopped the joker. I'm glad that it is that simple, if only for those two and a half hours in the dark of a movie theatre. The Law, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, those are one-size fits all. I'm happy it isn't the same with the movies, where there will always be a Batman or a Superman or John Wayne, where Arnold Schwarzenegger is just a robot, and not a governor.
...and I love Usual Suspects but the robbery sequence in that doesn't stack up against the robbery in Dark Knight. If we're talking about just those sequences. Shot for shot, you get way more bang for your buck. The "heist" in Usual Suspect is nothing special, just part of the bigger puzzle. The robbery in Dark Knight is a great short separate from the film. So great it was shown intact as advertisement for the rest of the film. You couldn't sell Usual Suspects on the strength of the heist scene alone.
Hey Reecer
Well, you seem to have basically dropped the specifics of my critique of Batman - other than comparing it unfavourably to The Usual Suspects. I stand by my comment in this regard. Batman was all the technique that money could buy and none of the artistry that requires some integrity to something other than selling action figures and giant slurpee cups at the 7-11. But, thinking about your point got met thinking about other heist scenes that knocked my socks off: Dead Presidents or even the final robbery in Heat with that crazy chase scene. Blows this out of the water.
But on to more important points.
Your argument against me seems to come down to an argument that the experience of films (and by extension all art) is purely personal and therefore no larger claims about meaning can be made.
This is unsustainable.
All art is built upon language, it is an evolved series of symbols and techniques that allow us to communicate meaning. This is inherently collective. That isn't to say that there isn't an individual component to your experience: you filter and translate the collective meaning of the film language through your personal experience. But even here, your personal experience is not something that you directly access in some sort of unproblematical, unmediated way. You access it through language and through a series of semiotic images that have prefigurative meaning.
So, you have a personal experience of criminal violence that led to the death of a loved one. How you react to that has a personal component, sure. But much more is about the collective determination of meaning, which is historical and social: are criminals seen as problems or as symptoms of deeper social problems? In what sense are they problems? How do we solve them? How big a problem do we perceive them to be? How do we envision what a criminal is? Is a criminal a young black man with a stolen handgun - or is it a corporate executive who signs off on a security contract in another country that leads to the formation of death squads that kill dozens of local peasants and union activists? How about politicians who spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military while cutting funding for community centres, daycare and arts funding - that leads to bombs killing people in foreign countries and disaffected youth without job prospects engaging in interpersonal violence in their communities (or taking the only decent job on offer and engaging in military violence in far-off lands)?
I could continue this process of interrogating our interpretation of meaning but you probably get my point. The same thing applies to film - why is Bruce Wayne a hero - he makes weapons and he treats women like objects. He has a butler whose idea of life lessons is to describe how they burned down the Burmese jungle to eliminate a local insurgency (not an accidental choice by the writer/director, I should think). This is a not very nice man, yet we are made to identify with him through the use of story techniques, shots, music, etc. etc.
In other words the creators made creative choices and those creative choices were informed by a particular set of beliefs - how could it be otherwise. And, you say, great art is not propaganda (though sometimes propaganda becomes great art despite itself). Well, I would say that Batman IS exactly propaganda - and not art at all, despite itself or otherwise.
But more than that, I don't think that our choices here are Batman or propaganda. I'm certainly not advocating for "issue" films. By and large I neither watch nor enjoy such films - of whatever political persuasion they may be. Brokeback Mountain was a wonderful film because it engaged with the real struggles faced by gay people in that world and universalized it - everyone could understand shame and unrequited love, bravery and cowardice. It certainly wasn't propaganda.
Dead Presidents, which I mentioned above, was a powerful movie that had at its core a scathing critique of racism in America. But it wasn't a programmatic piece of propaganda. It, also, universalized the plight of its central protagonist.
A movie like 300 is propaganda - beautiful propaganda but propaganda nonetheless. Batman is likewise, though, frankly not even as beautiful as 300. And in terms of the questions it asks (and answers) it isn't even half as interesting as, say, Battlestar Galactica - which asks many of the same questions and comes at them often from the same political perspective but at least has the integrity to question itself and allow its characters to truly struggle. Batman never struggles in any real sense - should I quit so that I can be with Rachel? Maybe Harvey Dent can do the job legitimately (he punches some dude in the courtroom? please), then I can quit and be with her. He never once wrestles with what it means to be a rich fucker who owns a company that makes weapons and has assigned himself the role of beating up mostly poor criminals. And because he has no arc and because the Joker has no arc and because nobody really has an arc, the film is simply a beautiful piece of propaganda for iron-fisted rule, hidden in the velvet glove. Batman is "the hero we deserve but he isn't the one we need" says Commissioner Gordon - but we all know that Batman will be back in the next sequel and they'll realize that, in fact, he is exactly what they need.
As for social responsibility - well, as I say, film's responsibility, that of all true art, is to engage critically with the contradictions of the day between subjective desire and the objective obstacles to the realization of that desire. I happen to think that these are radical questions - which is why they should trouble and not simply tittilate us. But it doesn't mean they shouldn't also be pleasurable - Casablanca is a pleasurable movie. It was also troubling at the time - Rick is our hero AND he's a collaborator with the Nazis. The works of Altman, Gus Van Sant, Mike Leigh, Fellini, Godard, Bunuel, even some of Ridley Scott's work. At their best they entertain and disturb us; ie. when they are radical - think about Alien or Gosford Park. Shit even Schwarzenegger got it right sometimes (totally by accident, I'm sure). Total Recall is a really good film - and it's not simply a cartoon or a piece of propaganda. I remember watching it for the first time and when the full truth is revealed about who he is - and then thinking about him choosing not to return to who he was the philosophical implications of that made me think "holy fuck". It was actually profound - and then he blew shit up, which was cool.
Thanks, this review sums up much of what I felt when watching the film. I was dragged to the opening midnight screening by a film-buff friend and I was amazed by the line-ups - all teenagers, mostly boys. The most disturbing thing of all was when people were laughing at the Joker's crimes - especially the 'disappearing pencil act'. Fucking disgusting. This film is trash - and it's not good art either. For all the construction of Gotham - the city - as a protagonist, it falls flat on its face. Give me Scorcese - now he can make a city a protagonist.
Reece - Isn't The Dark Knight the biggest grossing film of all time? Isn't that reason enough to consider its political implications?
The idea of superpowerful human elites striding around in capes (and often, primary, courtly colours), is an essentially fascist idea - it's monarchy by other means, for a time when actually writing fables about what Henry the Umpteenth did to Louis the whatzits, became politically incorrect.
So it's not at all surprising that you detected all of these undercurrents in any Batman, story, since these undercurrents are in all superhero stories rooted in the pre-X-Men tradition. With the advent of Spider-Man the uncertain ordinary teenager, and particularly the X-Men in which anybody could randomly be born with superpowers and this empowered contingent became an underclass due to establishment fear, that's when superheroism in sequential art took a turn away from the right-wing. BTW this was an early '60s Marvel phenomenon and it predated the popularisation of countercultural politics by a number of years, so it's quite significant.
Anyway most of your objections are best seeni n the context of the history of superhero conventions and what political assumptions are built into each stage of that history, rather than as specific indictments of The Dark Knight, which granted, is not all that it's cracked up to be. But then, people holding up pop entertainment to very low standards is a modern epidemic. I've actually read bloggers claiming that the truly awful voice acting in Grand Theft Auto 4 is 'Oscar-worthy', simply because it wasn't as groan-worthy as the voice acting in every other video game ever made.
Fools, Grand Theft Auto 4 is clearly inferior to Gears of War, which will be remembered as a revolutionary addition to our cultural cache.
Interesting point, which I've shamelessly plagiarized in response to a comment on my review of Hancock - though with an additional note on the failure of X-Men to realize their radical potential.
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